[3] Cothran attended Northwestern University for two years, then transferred to UC Berkeley where he studied music and became interested in linguistics.

Never graduating, he found employment at San Francisco radio station KKHI (then an all-classical format), rising to program director.

[7] Cothran continued as an associate of Bernstein's during the period of development of the latter's failed musical, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (1976), also studying piano informally under Harvard's Luise Vosgerchian.

Felicia and daughter Jamie Bernstein came to see Cothran as an immoral, or at least irresponsible, seducer, a perspective reflected in early biographies of the composer after his death.

[4][9] Cothran traveled widely, including to Nepal and India, returning to the United States in 1981 with a rare lymphoma, later recognized as one of the earliest cases of AIDS.

Actor and playwright Martin Julien's The Unanswered Question premiered at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa in March, 2007, with Tom McCamus as Bernstein.